Jeffrey E. Epstein, a billionaire New York financier long accused of molesting dozens of girls, was arrested on Saturday and charged with sex trafficking by federal prosecutors, an extraordinary turn of events in a long and sordid criminal case...He is expected to appear before a federal magistrate on Monday...

Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, according to one of the sources. Flight records show he had just flown to Teterboro from Paris on Saturday...Around 5:30 p.m. Saturday, about a dozen federal agents broke down the door to Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse to execute search warrants, witnesses and sources said.

“We heard the loud banging and we walked over and saw all these FBI agents just pounding down the door,” a witness told the Herald...Sources told the Herald that the indictment includes new victims and witnesses who spoke to authorities in New York over the past several months.

Epstein...has homes in Manhattan, Palm Beach, New Mexico, Paris and in the U.S. Virgin Islands...

Epstein’s primary residence is on Little St. James, an island off the coast of St. Thomas. Last year, he purchased a second larger island, Great St. James, where he has been clearing land in preparation for building. His plane records show that during the time he was abusing young girls, he was flying former President Bill Clinton, Harvard professors and administrators, Nobel-prize winning scientists, actresses, actors, philanthropists and a who’s who of wealthy and powerful people to his island.

His plane, nicknamed “the Lolita Express,’’ was also allegedly used to traffic women and girls from overseas, Giuffre told the Herald.

UPDATE 5

Is this going to be a problem for Trump? He knows Epstein and has attended parties and social events where he was photographed with Epstein.

Further, Maurene Comey, daughter of fired FBI Director James Comey, is reportedly one of the prosecutors in the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Comey has been serving as an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York since 2015.

UPDATE 6

A two-count indictment was unsealed early Monday in federal court in Manhattan, the full indictment here.

Girls as young as 14 cited.

UPDATE 7

BREAKING: Authorities found "at least hundreds--and perhaps thousands--of sexually suggestive photographs of fully- or partially-nude females," some of whom "appear to be" underage girls. Some were in a "locked safe."

Prosecutors: Epstein tried to "harass or tamper with witnesses," and hired private investigators who "'forc[ed] off the road' the father of an individual relevant in the investigation," in an "alarming" incident.

Former President Bill Clinton has released a statement distancing himself from convicted Jeffrey Epstein:

“President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes [Epstein] pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York,” the statement said.

“In 2002 and 2003, President Clinton took a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane: one to Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation,” the statement added. “Staff, supporters of the foundation, and his Secret Service detail traveled on every leg of every trip. He had one meeting with Epstein in his Harlem office in 2002, and around the same time made one brief visit to Epstein’s New York apartment with a staff member and his security detail. He’s not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade, and he has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.”

Investigative journalist Conchita Sarnoff said Monday that former President Bill Clinton isn’t telling the truth when he says he "knows nothing" of the alleged crimes of Jeffrey Epstein...Sarnoff, who first broke the Epstein story back in 2010, says the figure isn’t accurate, claiming that Clinton was a guest on Epstein’s planes many more times over a longer period.

“I know from the pilot logs and these are pilot logs that you know were written by different pilots and at different times that Clinton went, he was a guest of Epstein's 27 times,” she said, adding that “many of those times Clinton had his Secret Service with him and many times he did not.”...“I'm saying, sadly, that he is not telling the truth,” she said. “First of all, Gerald Lefcourt, who was one of Epstein's attorneys back during the original arrest and the original investigation, wrote a letter which has been made public.”

She added: “In that letter, Gerald Lefcourt claims that Epstein was one of the original funders of Clinton Global Initiative. He gave President Clinton four million dollars, according to a source who knows a story about that.”

27 comments:

This certainly never received enough attention from the press. It would not surprise if most members in the DC elite were pedophiles or more than that. The press wanted to make fun of the Pizzagate as conspiracy theorist but there is pretty good evidence that there is a child trafficking network.

What, were you born after 2001? Of course Clinton's sexual peccadilloes got quite a bout of media attention. Clinton was also accused of rape. It was reported. Whether Clinton's supporters wanted to believe the accusers or not, is another story. I wasn't living in this country in the 90's and even I knew. Everybody knew. Voters knew, which is why he lost the Senate and Congresd and cost his VP the presidential chair.

@oldmexican, of course Clinton's sexual crimes were well known, but that's a distinctly different issue than that of Epstein's child trafficking crimes, (of which both Trump & Clinton & many others in power were reportedly involved with Epstein & his plane flights.)

Putting aside the illegality of these acts in our state dominated society and their offense to most people’s morality, and given that these girls were enticed but apparently not physically coerced, i.e. they gave their consent, how would this situation be treated in a libertarian, private property based legal system?

I would ask the young women if they said yes. If they said yes, I would ask them if they were harmed. If they said no, I would shrug and move on. I just don't consider touching to be horrible. You have to be a Christian, a Jew, or a Muslim to think humans touching one another for mutual pleasure is a problem.

Got any young daughters John Howard? You’d have this same opinion if your 14 year old daughter had sex with a 40+ year old man? Even if she said yes? You would say “well as long as she wasn’t hurt, mutually touching each other for pleasure is fine.”BS.I’d blow the guy’s head off.

I've got daughters. I can't imagine either of them saying yes to Jeffery Epstein. For those teen girls that do, have, or would, I don't care how piously the father froths about "blowing heads off," I have to question the relationship he has with his daughter. The lust for bloody vengeance after the fact is a cover-up, a distraction, a flashy, sleight-of-hand misdirection away from the question of the dysfunctional parent-child relationship, which is the more fundamental consideration. You have to wonder, in cases like that, if the "angry father" is more incensed because he perceives his "property rights" have been violated, or if it's genuine concern over injury to his child. In either case, such a phenomenon is an instance of too little, too late. An ounce of connected, functional, family relationships is worth more than a ton of vengeance and retribution...or an infinite amount of empty moral posturing.

Monte Cristo. Give me a break. Bad things happen to good kids from good families too. I don't think you know what you're talking about. This is just a bunch of victim blaming nonsense.

You not being able to imagine your daughters doing something isn't going to actually stop them. Neither they nor the predators who are far more clever than you are constrained by the limits of your imagination. The predators in particular are counting on your confidence in the power of your imagination.

It is quite probable that Montecristo knows his daughters better than you think he does; which doesn’t argue against your point that bad things can happen to good kids from good families, or that daughters can pull the wool over their parents’ eyes.

When parents discover that their children have been victimized, they're usually surprised. Most of them had taken all the precautions they thought were reasonable. Most of them thought they knew what their kids were up to.

Montecristo, you got me. I have no relation ship with my daughter, any of the 4, or any of my 4 sons. HahahaThat was a pretty stupid comment. I mean, great job sounding like a deep thinker though. Congrats.And john Howard, you are a jackass. Seriously. I hope you don’t have any kids. The comment you offered had nothing to do with the type of man I said I would shoot.And to both of you, where did I say anything about property rights? Strange both of your rebuts brought that up. Oh, and I’m not doing any “moral posturing”. I’m not intellectual enough too.

Bad things DO happen to good kids. Of course clueless parents are surprised when they do. I've been clueless before. I've been surprised by some things. The distinction is to take responsibility for the relationships with our children and not pretend that things "just happen." It's easier for clueless, dysfunctional people to blame mysterious, unfathomable circumstances that "just happen" rather than look into a mirror and find the dysfunction in their family relationships. It is really not surprising to find people experiencing the consequences of bad choices denying that the consequences are the result of choices at all, but rather, bad luck, fate, hostile society, bad and unsupportive culture, powerful, wealthy, clever predators who took advantage of them, racism, sexism, patriarchy, capitalism, etc. Blame is better to give than receive.